


Dragon Ball NextGenWeek - Day 1 - Trunks

by indevan



Series: Dragon Ball NextGenWeek 2019 [1]
Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Mental Breakdown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-06 19:18:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18394706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indevan/pseuds/indevan
Summary: The responsibilities of eventually having to run Capsule Corp get to Trunks





	Dragon Ball NextGenWeek - Day 1 - Trunks

There was a ticking in his head.  Trunks couldn’t explain it but he could feel it, almost hear it.  He sat at the long, rectangular table that had a weird, coffin-shaped light set in the middle and pretended to listen to boring suits prattle on, but inside he was ticking.  The light wasn’t on, leaving a reflective cavern that was messing with his perception. He was at once feeling everything and feeling nothing. A part of this room and apart from it.  His mother sat next to him, popping the gum she had begun chewing to try and stop smoking and each sound was like a perforation on his eardrums.

The voice of whoever was talking was a low drone in his head.  No, a drill. A drill slowly whirring and pressing into his brain, right above his left ear.  Trunks tried to breathe in through his nose and out through his mouth but his chest was too tight.  Breathing was hard. Loud, then, drowning out the drill. Breathing too loud as he struggled to get air in.  A thumping beneath it--his heart?

This was his job.  He was the heir to Capsule Corp, poised to take over whenever his mom decided she was done ruling the empire.  Trunks had known this since he was eight. He was a scientific genius like his mother, like his grandfather. He was going to take over one day.  It was what everyone wanted for him. What he wanted--right? Was it? Could something be a dream if it wasn’t a choice?

“Mr. Briefs?”

The voice was faraway, so very faraway.  It didn’t matter. Whoever was talking didn’t matter.  He just had to breathe, calm the buzzing. Droning. Drilling.  Pounding. Breath. Heart. The cavern in the table. Popping gum.

“Mr. Briefs?”

The voice, more insistent.  Who was it? What did they want?  The room was quaking ever so slightly as he sat in his chair but no one else seemed to notice.  A new voice, concerned. Breath smelling like gum.

“Sweetie?”

Had to talk.  Had to look normal.  He was the goddamn heir to Capsule Corp; he couldn’t be acting like this.  Trunks opened his mouth but nothing came out. Then a low moan that began to crescendo.  He shut his mouth but the damage was done. His world rocked into focus and everyone stared at him.  Everyone judged him.

“Are you quite alright?” the older man who ran the R&D department asked.

“No,” he said, before he could stop himself. “I’m not alright.  I can’t fucking do this anymore.”

“Do what?” his mother asked. “Baby, what’s wrong?”

“I can’t do this,” he said, words falling fast like water.  Like vomit. “I can’t work here. I can’t do this. I can’t be the heir.  I can’t be a CEO. I don’t want to.”

Trunks wasn’t sure that he meant those words until they were said and he realized he did.  He didn’t want this. He didn’t want to suffocate under everyone’s expectations of him. In his life, he used to consider his father’s wants for him (to focus on fighting, to train, to get stronger) were tougher than his mother’s, but it was the opposite.  His father didn’t bug him as much about training but his mother’s desires and expectations were always implicit. She didn’t outright force him, but there was the pressure. And he was cracking.

“Trunks?” she sounded concerned and confused, not angry.

“I quit,” he said, startling himself with the finality of the words. “I quit.”

He said it twice, testing it on his tongue.  It felt right and wrong at once and he was seized with the urge to fly out the window, but he couldn’t.  As far as almost everyone at Capsule Corp was concerned, his father was a minor prince from a city-state no one had heard of because it was made up as opposed to the prince of a dead, alien race.  Flying out of the window might ruin those perceptions and he didn’t want the grief. Not after the scene he just pulled.

“Mr. Briefs?” R&D again.

“I quit,” he said a third time.

And then he turned on one foot and walked out the door.

\--

Goten was home when he walked in the door and Trunks was startled for a moment before his brain clicked into place and he remembered that today was his day off, which was why the kids were here and not with Goten’s parents.

At the moment, they were sitting on the carpet that was spread out in front of the couch.

Goten craned his neck as the door opened and raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“Oh, hey, you’re home early.  Meeting get cut short?”

He wasn’t sure what to say or how to say it.  Maybe it was a mistake. Instead, he made his way around the couch to see what the kids were doing.  Bustle was on her stomach, playing with the dolls Gohan got her for her birthday last year while Garter sat on Goten’s lap, looking at a book of rocks.

“Sort of,” he said cryptically.  He watched Bustle tie one of her dolls to two popsicle sticks in the shape of an X.

“‘You are not welcome in our town, interloper,’” she said, waving one doll around to make it look as though she were talking. “‘Now you must pay for trespassin’!”

Bustle seemed to have the same “genius-level” intelligence that he and Bra had, with her vocabulary being far advanced for a six-year-old.  She also had recently developed and incredibly  _ distinct _ taste in the strange and macabre.

“‘You can’t get away with what you do here!’” she said for the doll tied to the sticks.

“Sort of?” Goten asked. “What’s that mean?”

Trunks gestured to Bustle, glad for the distraction. “Should we be concerned about this?”

“Pan and Bra let her watch  _ Children of the Corn _ and this is the aftermath.  As long as it doesn’t get too weird, I think we’re okay.”

Garter reached up to tug on Goten’s shirt and pointed to a picture in the book.

“I like this guy,” he said.

A five, Garter was on track to be similar to Bustle.  His father said it was because they were half-Saiyan and his mother said it was because they were Briefs.  Either way, he was glad that Garter’s intellect was dedicated to cool rocks and gemstones he liked and not (fake) ritual sacrifice.

Trunks took off his suit jacket and tossed it to the chair.  He looked at it, thinking he should hang it up, but it then occurred to him that he wouldn’t need it anymore.

“You’re sweaty.  Is everything alright?”

Goten cocked his head to the side in concern and Trunks looked at him.  At those deep, dark eyes, the stubborn little cleft in his chin and the perpetually messy hair.  His heart melted and he knew he had to tell him now and stop dodging it. He loved Goten and he couldn’t keep this from him.

“I quit,” he said and even the fourth time, it sounded so bizarre.  He quit. He was no longer at CC.

“You quit?”

Hearing it that frankly from someone else made something in him drop and Trunks sank to the floor, head in his hands.

“I had a breakdown in the middle of the meeting and ran out after I said I quit.”

He had turned his cell phone off, too terrified to see messages from the board or, worse, his mother.

“What?  Are you alright?”

He wasn’t sure how to answer that.  Goten gently picked Garter up to set him down and came next to him.

“Can I touch you?”

Trunks nodded.  The worst of it passed on his way home and now he was just sitting on the floor, dealing with the aftermath.  Goten wrapped his arms around him and pressed his lips against the joint of his jaw. Trunks relaxed into his hold, savoring it.  It always struck him as strange that he and Goten had only been married for less than ten years. He could barely remember what it was like before they were together, maybe because they never really  _ weren’t _ together.  Every person they dated in the meantime seemed to be a stopping point until they finally got over themselves and found each other.  He always felt like Goten was in his veins, in his mind, maybe because they spent so much time as one being.

Regardless, he was happy to just rest in his husband’s arms and not directly have to deal with what he just dealt with.

“I wasn’t happy,” he said after a moment. “I think I liked it back when I was just doing experiments, but the actual...running CC stuff.  I hated it.”

“I could tell.” Goten spoke the words against his skin, breath warming it. “I didn’t want to say anything ‘cause it’s your life, but.  I could see you weren’t happy. Guess I should have spoken up…”

It wasn’t his fault.  Trunks probably wouldn’t have even listened to him.  His mother’s expectations versus his husband’s worries?  They sat there for a moment, listening to Bustle narrate her overblown doll drama and Garter hum to himself as he flipped through his rock book.  Trunks liked this. These background sounds. The weight of Goten’s arms around him.

“What now?” he asked.

“Talk to your mom?”

He shuddered. “Okay, but after that.”

He felt Goten shrug. “I dunno.  Find something you’re passionate about?”

Trunks considered his words.  Goten was passionate about helping others, which was why he was an ER trauma nurse.  His mother was passionate about her own inventions and innovations. His father was passionate about training to get stronger.  And him? What was he even passionate about? He had had so much of his career path laid out for him that he hadn’t had time to stop and think about what he really wanted.  Furthering his robotics experiments meant interacting with Capsule Corp again, and the thought made his stomach clench. So what was left for him?

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

Goten shifted so he was holding him more easily and Trunks could rest his head on his shoulder.

“There’s no rush,” he told him. “Figure it out.  Until then, you can...I dunno, stay home with the kids so we don’t have to foist them off on my mom every time we both have work.”

Stay home with the kids...Trunks smiled a bit.  That actually sounded heavenly.

“‘Another sacrifice to our god,’” Bustle said gravely, laying the doll strung to the popsicle sticks down.

Well.  Almost heavenly.


End file.
